Newport News woman says she benefited most from volunteer work in Dominican Republic

(Photos courtesy of Melissa…)

February 13, 2014|By Jennifer L. Williams, jwilliams@dailypress.com

NEWPORT NEWS — — Melissa Nehrbass is looking at things very differently after returning from what she called a "life-changing" volunteer trip to the Dominican Republic.

The Newport News resident, a member of the National PTA Board of Directors since 2010, volunteered with a group of PTA members, educators and employees from the Lifetouch school photography company on Jan. 21-28. Lifetouch has sponsored mission projects in various countries since 2000, with the World Servants organization coordinating this one.

Nehrbass, 56, spent a memorable week with about 50 volunteers, building a vocational facility at the Cecaini School in mountainous Constanza, Dominican Republic. On her way back, she and a small group of travelers all sustained minor injuries in a head-on collision in Atlanta amid the ice and snow of a storm that paralyzed the city.

Back home, still sore but resting, Nehrbass said she had tried to minimize the memory of the accident and spending a night in a hospital lobby. Instead she has been reflecting on the people she met in the Dominican Republic and their upbeat attitudes while struggling with severe poverty.

"It was the most unbelievable amount of poverty I could even begin to imagine," she said. "I've not been so sheltered that I don't know that there's poverty in our own city — but on this scale, this much, and that many people. And I have never in my life met happier people living with so little. They wanted to share with you.

"I guess the best way I can put it is I went down there thinking I was going to do something to help them," she said. "And I've come back saying they did more to help me as a person than I could have ever given to them, even though we're building this school for them, which is a way to get them out of poverty."

Church leaders in Constanza spearheaded the school, which does not charge tuition as most there do, but requires student uniforms to be purchased. Education is spotty in the Dominican Republic, with children often attending school at an older age, if they go at all, Nehrbass said.

Cecaini teachers volunteer unless there is extra money to pay them, and the school feeds students a bun and boxed drink a couple of times a week, if it's able to.

Nehrbass' most vivid memories were of visiting the home of a large family where the older father with a shoulder problem still worked in the fields, and of going to a dump where people live year-round and make their living foraging through garbage. Small children, including a girl who looked to be around age 4, searched the trash, while workers arrived in trucks to sort through the newest trash that had been delivered.

"So I came home with a little different look on what I have, what I throw away and what I need," Nehrbass said. "Because them having so little, they were so happy; they were content. It was amazing."

A church pastor and his wife in Constanza hosted the group. They visited the group each evening and invited the volunteers to Sunday church services. Translators were constant companions because almost no one in the group spoke Spanish, including Nehrbass.

Lifetouch's signature moment is taking school photos of the students that they can take home to their parents.

"To see their little faces when they saw professional photographs of themselves — they were just, like, unbelievable," she said. "I would love to have seen some of their parents' faces when they got to see these pictures of their children for the first time. It was quite moving — something we just take for granted, having pictures of our kids, and it was so new to them."